I Love you my dad

Monday, 25 January 2016

It was the year 2012. I was attending one of the seminars being delivered by Dr. Aniruddha Joshi (beloved called Aniruddha Bapu by his friends and followers). There were many IT engineers and technologists from amongst Dr. Joshi’s friends who were attending this seminar along with me. This was when Dr. Joshi asked us if we were aware of ‘Digital Divide’ and the answer which we all had was “No”… So it was for the first time that I was hearing this word ‘Digital Divide’. In very simple and clear terms Dr. Joshi explained to us this new global concept of categorization of people which was based on factors which though were not ethnic but were creating different sorts of ethnicities the world-over.

(Courtesy: www.wrsc.org)

As the name suggests, Digital Divide is certainly linked with computer and the internet. The advent of the computer simplified many of our activities. People recognized the 21stcentury as the ‘Digital Age’ as it seemed dominated by technology. Today, ‘Personal Computing’ can be done on desktops, laptops, other access points like gaming consoles, e-readers, mobile phones and tablets. As more and more of our activities, interests and needs come to be satisfied by the digital world, a gap has emerged between the people and regions that have access to modern information and communications technologies, and those that don’t or have partial access to it. The technologies include telephone, television,personal computers, mobile devices and importantly the internet. This gap between the digital-haves and digital-haves-not is called the DIGITAL DIVIDE.

Saturday, 23 January 2016

On Sunday, January 17, 2016 Vedant Vishwanath Sawant, a 9-year old kid from Vashi, had the glory of bagging title of the fastest swimmer between Elephanta Islands to Gateway of India in the under-10 years age category. A student of class IV, Vedant has a keen interest in swimming.

In this solo attempt of his, he swam a distance of 14 kilometres at a stretch finally reaching Gateway of India. His determined and commendable endeavour has lead him to set a new record of crossing the Elephant to Gateway sea-route in 2 hours, 50 minutes, 28 seconds breaking the previous record of 3 hours and 10 minutes.

To celebrate the contented victory of this young talented kid, few pilot boats with official observers, time keepers, his couches and parents were present at the shore along with mayor of Navi Mumbai Shri. Sudhakar Sonawane to welcome him.

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Recently I read that Department of Posts in association with a private company will establish mobile terminals with hand-held devices that have cameras and biometricfacilities. These terminals will ease all postal and financial transactions in the rural branch offices. This service aims to improve the quality of service, and thus allow existing Post Office schemes reach the un-banked rural population and achieve “financial inclusion” of the rural masses. The Rural Information and Communication Technology Project is a part of the larger IT modernization project being undertaken by the Department of Posts.

Today India`s postal servicesis one of the largest networks and most widely distributed networks in the world. The postal service has always been a valuable service through history. The history of the Indian postal service in various forms stretches back many a centuries. The history ofIndia’s postal system began long before the introduction of postage stamps. Methods for collecting information and revenue data from the provinces and relaying them to the king are mentioned in Chanakya’s Arthashastra.- See more at:http://www.aniruddhafriend-samirsinh.com/indian-postal-service/ || Hari Om || || Shriram || || Ambadnya ||

Courtesy: www.one-europe.info

First of the three ‘continental unions’ formed in the year 1993 was the ‘European Union’ or the EU. As of today it is a grouping of 28 European nations. By and large this politico-economic union has so far succeeded in establishing a single market, single visa regime, common laws and policies and most importantly a single currency with a few exceptions. “Exceptions”? EU today owns the largest net wealth in the world then which are these exceptions that I am referring to and what are the reasons behind them?

In the year 2009, following the global financial crisis, Greece received first warning from EU to cut down on its spendings to fight an ever-growing mountain of debts. The resulting austerity measures that have been continually imposed by the EU under bullying from countries like Germany, Belgium and France have led to almost 40% Greeks to believe in ‘Grexit’ or exit of Greece from the EU.

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

In the earlier part of this article we went back to the starting point of the conflict in Syria and understood the various militias and countries that have ganged up against each other. The conflict which earlier seemed to have been restricted to a small area and local cause seems to be engulfing the entire world in this tentacles.

Courtesy: http://static.guim.co.uk

In addition to all the nations mentioned earlier, there have been a few additions. France and the United Kingdom have actively participated in the aerial attacks on ISIStargets in Syria while Germany is conducting ‘intelligence extraction’ sorties. It is to be noted that they have not joined voluntarily but have been forced to join the airstrikes after ISIS launched attacks in their backyards, right under their noses. The terrorist attacks in Paris and incidences of stabbings in the UK were the defining moments for entry of France and UK in the ring of Syria. Today there are more than 60 countries in the world which are on ISIS’s radar and hence have been on high alert.

Sunday, 10 January 2016

Recently it has been reported that Russia would support the Taliban in its fight against ISIS. The Taliban had denied this previously but a senior Afghan Taliban commander has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin held a ‘secret’ meeting with Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the current Taliban chief, to discuss possible Russian support for the Taliban. Though Russia would not supply them with arms and ammunition, Russia would be supplying them with intelligence and information.

Historically, former Soviet Union and the Taliban were enemies of each other. Soviet Unionhad invaded Afghanistan and the following Soviet–Afghan War which lasted over nine years, lead to the death of 1 to 1.5 million civilians. Taliban, who had received aid from several Western countries and their allies in the Middle East and Asia, fought against the Soviet Army and allied Afghan Govt. forces combined and had defeated them.